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22 November, 2007

I've been on an unusual tea-drinking quest of late, finding myself unusually often in the SCR [Senior Common Room] of various colleges. Despite the surprising quality of the wine, coffee, and cheese that each provides, the tea is woefully sub-par. Or, rather, it's extremely normal (which is much the same). My quest is to find an SCR that serves good tea. There are 39 colleges here - the odds were initially on my side, but now I'm running out of options.

Back at the tea-table, it's time for some proper tea. At last.

This one is from the imaginatively-named "YiwuZhengshan Tea Company" - what a name. It's a cake from Xiaomei, the tea vendor in Maliandao whose shop seemed to be an eternal tea-party (although admittedly consisting of the same guests each day).

Dry leaves

Ahh, tobacco. I recall the last time that I mentioned my preference for such a characteristic, an actual cigarette butt revealed itself in a dodgy block of shupu - I'll try not to tempt fate.

The leaves of the cake are singular and dark, and have the scent of fine, sweet... tobacco. Excellent.

The lid-scent is robust and expectedly green (being under a year old), with a certain fruitiness. The leathery-sweet wenxiangbei hints at more tobacco.

The character of the tea is uniquely tangy: so very tangy, with dark fruits, and a very sweet, fruity nose - it's a cross between tangy shengpu and a dessert wine.

Plenty of ku, tasting very much like "tea", which other cakes seem to often only approach near the end of their sessions. The smooth texture is almost slippery, it's so thick.

OverallA bit fruity, and the tang really necessitates a good few years to mellow. Overall, it's pleasant, and rather inexpensive (but, then again, it was bought in China, which is a bit of an unrepresentative statement).

Addendum
January, 2011

This tea has "gone quiet". I still enjoy its tobacco-like finish. Fun, but currnetly limited, in its sweet, straw-like way. Perhaps January isn't the best time to revisit a tea.

Both Hster and I have stored this tea since 2006, in Berkeley, California and Oxford, England, respectively. How do they shape up, when facing one another?

I rememmber digging this tea in far out and happening ways for quite some time. However, it's been a while since I last tried it. As you will see from my notes above, I have only dipped into it once in recent years, to find that it had gone rather quiet. This happens now and again with some cakes; I don't worry if a cake has a sleep - I do worry if it doesn't wake up.

This batch of teacakes is the result of a few purchases, from Maliandao and from Scott of Yunnan Sourcing. In bought most of them for about US $20, which is a laughable price at today's rates. It is a shame to see that pu'ercha has become so much more expensive - perhaps this makes us more careful, which can only be a good thing.

The cake shown above took some damage in my suitcase on the way back from Beijing one autumn. I remember coming back via Moscow, where the entirety of my tea purchases were searched by a huge Russian woman who could easily have crushed me. Her arms were thicker than my torso.

This cake is beautiful, and I will brook no dissent. Even the photograph gets me thirsty. My version has a strong, plummy scent that fills the room when I slide the wrapper away, suggesting that it sleeps no longer.

The leaves are long and luscious - considering this cake costs a mere twenty of your liberal American bucks, the quality of the leaves is really rather staggering.

The length is such that they actually require pre-softening with warm water, such that they can be put into the teapot without damage. For twenty dollars. It's criminal.

I wrote "My old friend seems very much awake today. The soup is a strong yellow, darkening to orange in the gongdaobei [fairness cup] as I write. The aroma is tangy, sweet, and then a remarkably heavy base of tobacco. It has a strong Yiwu body, shengjin [pleasant mouth-watering], and a vibrantly sweet aftertaste. Underneath that lies the stratum of stick molasses that I originally loved in it."

"There is a very decent sweetness that penetrates the mouth, and which results in a cooling huigan [throaty aftertaste]. The genre is unmistakeably that of Yiwu sweet-straw. It is encouraging to see that the English climate has nurtured this cake so well."

I came back to it a few weeks after trying Hster's cake, and added: "Clean, vivid, orange, sweet, and woody. Vibrant and cooling, I like it very much. Soft, tobacco base and the character os sweet straw. Numbness at the tip of the tongue."

The ladywriting above can only be that of Hster, and it is a great pleasure to be able to try another version of one of my favourites.

Hster's cake looks just as charming as my versions, and I wonder how the dry storage will have affected it in the course of six year. I wrote that "The cake certainly seems brittle, and is subdued in aroma."

"The California version is doing well, but it is very dry - it does not have the 'damp straw' of our version, and has a lighter base, free of tobacco. It is sweet and accomplished, but tastes light and young."

I enjoyed it very much, unsurprisingly. It is fascinating indeed to see how two cakes, separated at birth but raised in different countries, can lead to such different results. I wouldn't like to say that one is better than the other, as both gave me excellent sessions, but they are definitely birds of a different feather. I suspect that, in the end, we become attuned to our own collections, and I am sure that there is a degree of "echo chamber" effect occurring, where I convince myself that our teas are all proceeding marvellously, no matter where we live.

Ultimatley, if it tastes good to you, then you're doing it right. Both Hster's and my cakes fit easily into the category of "good tea", no matter their differences, and so I conclude that we can rest easy.

This might reveal another aspect of my crackpot personality, but I actually find it quite a calming introduction to the tea session to sit down with a chunk of cake and slowly, carefully separate it into leaves.

I read that in ikebana, the Japanese of flower-arranging, a skilled practitioner will get themselves into a suitable state of mind by slowly separating the stalks of the bunches that they have for the session.

Obviously, I'm no tea master, but there is some corresponding effect (for me, at least) in gently separating the tea leaves. Prior to that, I'm thinking about research, dinner, the state of English football at the hands of Croatians, and so on. After the leaf-separation, I'm not thinking of anything at all, and I'm ready to enjoy a good session.

I don't use a knife - just approach the cake from the outside edges, and slowly move the leaves until they want to come apart. Minimising breakage to avoid the bitterness, and you're off to a good start.

@Dalai, maybe this will help: http://white2tea.com/2014/10/19/break-apart-puer-cake/. If you are not interested in breaking up the whole cake, then you can just use a similar method on say a fourth or third. Also, this method is much easier on loosely pressed fancy vendor cakes then on say a Xiaguan tuo. With the latter you are pretty much obliged to drink chunks, unless you are willing to steam it open.